CNN Alerts Hub

CNN Alerts Hub is the internal platform powering all of CNN's breaking news alert delivery. The system routes high-priority editorial content to millions of subscribers across push notifications, email, and web — at scale, with lightning-fast speed requirements.

I led a dedicated cross-functional team to transition the product from a legacy, siloed toolset toward a unified omnichannel platform that gave the editorial team full control over targeting, scheduling, and delivery without engineering involvement.

Editorial teams were previously managing push, email, SMS, and web banners through many separate tools — each with its own logic, targeting model, and delivery quirks. During breaking news events, coordination was error-prone and slow, with the backend regularly failing or taking 15 to 30+ minutes to complete delivery during critical, high-frequency periods like election cycles. The technical challenge was sunsetting these disparate tools and coordinating multiple third-party delivery vendors under a single proprietary orchestration layer that could handle immense scale while building a real-time monitoring scheme that could catch failures before they became visible to subscribers.

I managed a significant internal investment, leading a dedicated pod of 4-6 engineers alongside project management and UI/UX specialists, consulting closely with editorial leads. We built a unified delivery orchestration service with an omnichannel editorial interface, giving journalists the ability to compose, schedule, and segment alerts across all channels in one flow. We implemented crucial formatting features, accurate previews, and live component status monitors to give the editorial team total peace of mind. Furthermore, we deeply integrated with CNN's Digital Operations Center (DOC) and partnered with external platforms, becoming early-access launch partners for Apple News, Flipboard, and more.

The impact was massive. Delivery times were slashed from upwards of 30 minutes to under 120 seconds, even under the load of hundreds of millions of daily visitors on peak news days. Post-launch, editorial coordination time dropped significantly. We introduced a new alert categorization system allowing consumers to set topical and frequency preferences, which drove up engagement and reduced opt-outs. By incorporating rich messaging, intelligent deep-linking, and engagement metrics for the first time, the platform became the foundation for CNN's alerting strategy across apps and web.